In recent years, the expansion of the use of plastic packing or shopping bags, particularly in grocery stores, has been nothing less than phenomenal. One customer in one line in a supermarket having a dozen or more lines may easily have his or her grocery purchases packed in anywhere from four to ten bags. In certain arrangements where the packs of bags are mounted on racks, such as are shown in U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,811,417 an RE 33,264, as well as in other types of mountings, a problem which tends to impede the efficiency of the actual packing process is that it requires some special digital effort to open the bags as they are pulled off the rack. This is because when packs of the bags are formed, they are pressed to minimize the space which they occupy, and this compression not only places adjacent bags tightly against each other, but it also places tightly against each other the plastic sheets constituting the side walls of each individual bag. As each bag is removed, therefore, some fingering effort is required to open the upper edges of each bag to produce the bag cavity into which the customers' purchases are to be packed. Such fingering of the bags to open their upper edges not only slows the packing process, but also, after a prolonged period of bag packing, tends to result in cramping of the packer's fingers. In addition, if, as is often the case, the packer must wet his or her fingers with saliva in order to separate the bag walls to open the bag, this can result in the undesirable transmission of bacteria or viruses to the customers' articles.
In order not only to minimize the presently required digital action of packers to open each bag pulled from a rack of the type illustrated in the patents mentioned above, but also to improve bag packing efficiency, it has been proposed to attach in some manner the rear side wall of a leading bag to the front side wall of the ensuing adjacent bag so that, as the leading bag is pulled from a rack, the front side wall of the ensuing bag is pulled apart from its rear side wall. Thereby, after detachment and removal of the leading bag, the packer is presented with the ensuing bag with its side walls pulled apart, so that groceries or other items may simply be deposited into the thus created bag cavity.
However, although efforts have been undertaken to devise some method and means for securing some portion of the rear side wall of a leading bag to some portion of the front side wall of the next ensuing bag, by applying an adhesive at one or more selected points between such abutting walls, so as to cause each ensuing bag to be opened as its preceding bag is pulled off the rack, such prior art efforts have heretofore been unsuccessful. Consequently, bag packs to accomplish this purpose are not currently marketed. Among the reasons for this lack of success are (a) the adhesive joinders have been unreliable; (b) after the bags are separated, objectionable patches of adhesive remain on portions of the bag walls to cause undesired adherence to other articles, or to the hands and fingers of those persons who may pick up the bags for their subsequent intended uses; and (c) the adhesions effected have in some instances resulted in ripping of the bags.